What is Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit?

Recently I have to evaluate latest version of Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit (AKA MAP Toolkit) for a client requirements.
I have first used Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit few years ago to get software inventory to address software licensing and partly with Citrix project application inventory.

The big change from older version and newer version is; we can use SCCM agent to collect the inventories and the installation process is very easy without any other dependencies.

Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit is a great tool from Microsoft for free like MDT.

Anyway what is Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit?
In a nutshell Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit agentless inventory tool which provides asset inventory (including Hardware and Software) of an organisation. Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit is mainly useful not only for the asset inventory but also environment readiness (migrations, upgrades etc..)

How to install Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit?
The MAP Toolkit can be downloaded from here

Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit installation is straight forward unlike the predecessors. No pre-requisites required.
The whole step up will take less than 15 min.

Below are the typical installation steps for MAP tool kit 9.2;
1.    Launch the installer as Administrator and follow the on screen prompts;

2.    Accept  EULA and click Next;

3.    Choose installation directory;

4.    Choose CEIP options;

5.    Click on Install;

6.    Watch the progress bar;

 
7.  Click Finish when it is done;

Well, what is next?? How to use the MAP Toolkit?
1.    Launch the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit from Start ->All Programs -> Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit folder

2.    Wait until Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit initialization is complete;

3.    Give a name to the database (Add description - optional)

4.    To create a new inventory Click on Perform an inventory

 5.    Select the inventory categories from the list;

6.    Select discovery methods; Based on the selected discovery method, various prompts will be presented;

7.    Enter the required information based on the selected discovery method;

 8.    Choose the AD forest and OU which we want to run the inventory against;

9.    Enter the account which will be used to access the resources in the environment. Make sure the account has appropriate permissions, otherwise in the report, access denied MSG will be displayed.

10.    Choose the credential order then click Next;

 11.    Accept the default and click Next;

 12.    Review the summary then click Finish.

13. You will see the below screen which the inventory is in progress.

That’s it.
MAP tool will collect the inventory for all the installed applications, various hardware and readiness of the environment.